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Community Ambassador 4 - David Wilkin

Our community ambassador this week is David Wilkin – Chair of Longfield Medical Centre.

David wears a few hats when it comes to helping people in his community to ‘Live Well’.

David chairs Longfield Medical Centre patient group in Maldon. He and his hardworking team of volunteers have conducted some outstanding work in helping others to ‘Live Well’. Recently they have:

Held medicine awareness sessions to reduce wastage of prescription drugs

Conducted 132 carbon monoxide tests, many resulting in referrals to smoking cessation clinics resulting – the group is already planning more sessions in 2018

Stewarded annual flu clinics and made them more comfortable for fellow patients.

David is also a Job Advisor for Essex Library Services. An important aspect of this role is bringing people who have been the victims of stroke, disability, illness and emotional upset back into employment. David works hard to help others build their confidence, which he says is crucial when seeking work and convincing others of your attributes. He also works with people to help them understand the ‘secrets’ of the competence-based interview and selection system.

David says, “It’s so lovely to hear people say, ‘Oh yeah!’ when they understand its simplicity and even better when they report having found a job.”

David has also worked on revealing how public transport users can experience disability hate crime (DHC) –the most overlooked strand of hate crime in the UK. David is the only researcher in the country – and one of only three globally – to try and pinpoint the problems and find solutions to opening up the social world for people whose self-esteem has been so damaged by DHC that they cannot face a public journey.